Ratan-splitting machine.



PA TENTED NOV. 5, 1907.

D. G. HULL. RATAN SPLITTING MACHINE.

APPLIQATION FILED MABHZI; 1907.

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I 7 IE; j INVENTOI? No. 870,435. PATENT-ED NOV. 5, 190v D. G. HULL. RATAN SPLITTING MACHINE.

APPLiOATION FILED MAR.21, 1907.

WITNESSES A I pr ATTORNEYS s SHEETS-SHEET 3.

UNITED STATES PATENT oriuoa.

DAVID C. HULL, OF WESTFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS, ASSIGNOR TO UNITED STATES WHIP COMPANY, OF WESTFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS, A CORPORATION OF MAINE.

RATAN-SPLITTING MACHINE.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented Nov. 5, 1907.

Application filed March 21, 1907. Serial No. 363,693.

United States of America, residing at Westfield, in the county of Hampden and State of Massachusetts, have invented a new and useful Ratan-Splitting Machine, of which the following is a specification.

My invention relates to improvements in machines which are adapted to handle the centers or cores of whips at certain stages during the process of their manufacture, and consists of splitting mechanism capable of being incorporated with such machine. Such mechanism comprises a splitting knife, means to thrust said'knife into the path of travel of the core through the machine and to withdraw the knife from such path, and means to properly time the action of the knife, together with so much of the old machine as is required to render the new mechanism operative and effective, all as hereinafter set forth.

For the sake of economy, in the manufacture of whips, and especially cheap whips, the centers or cores are made of wood and ratan with a rawhide filling piece, the wood being at the butt end and the ratan being secured thereto by splicing and gluing. In order to incorporate the rawhide with the ratan it is first necessary to split the latter from its free end to within a short distance of its spliced end, but it must not be split deep enough to injure the joint between the ratan and the wood. This work has heretofore been done by hand, and the primary object of my invention is to afford mechanical means for doing the same work automatically.

Other objects of my invention are to produce a machine which is capable of splitting the ratan portions, for the rawhide filling pieces, of the combination whip cores with great rapidity, as fast in fact as the cores can be fed to the machine; to provide means for determining and regulating the length of the split, such means being preferably adjustable so as to enable the machine to handle cores of different lengths, and to embody my invention in a practical, efficient and durable form in a machine which may in its general structural features, outside of the new features of construction, be any suitable existing machine or eiristing style of machine designed and intended for handling whip cores, although some new style or different make can be used if desired.

1 attain these objects by the mechanism illustrated in the accompanying drawings, in which Figure 1 is a plan view of a machine embodying my invention; Fig. 2, a front elevation of said invention; Fig. 3, an enlarged view of a whip core after being split; Fig. 4, an end elevation of the frame of the machine and the splitting mechanism or of themechanism through the direct medium of which the knife is operated, and, Fig. 5, a rear view of the cam disk and the adjustable cam carried thereby which actuates the splitting mechanism in one direction.

Similar figures refer to similar parts throughout the several views.

I will commence by describing briefly the old mechanism, and will then take up the new and show how the two are correlated and in what manner they are interdependent. The machine selected in the present case with which to combine the new features is a slitting machine of a usual and well known type consisting in part of front and back pieces or sides 10 and 11, respectively, connected by a base piece 13, a table 14 between said front and back sides and bracketed thereto above said base piece, a table 15 bracketed to the front of the side 10 and ledges 16 on the last-mentioned table, said table 15 with its ledges and the side 10 constituting a raceway 12 for the stock to beacted on, a centralizer 17 for the stock on the table 15 between adjacent ends of the ledges 16, upper and under, serrated feed rolls 1S paired with each other vertically and mounted on the front ends of shafts 19 journaled in the sides 10 and 11, trains of gears at the back of the machine to drive said shafts, the upper train appearing at 20 in Fig. 1, and tight and loose pulleys 21 and 22 on the lower middle shaft 19 for the driving belt (not shown). Power is transmitted from the pulley 21 to and through the various gears and shafts mentioned to revolve the feed-rolls 18. Said feed-rolls cut into the raceway 12 above the table 15 and may be said to constitute parts of the same. Springs 23 interposed between the upper shafts 19, behind the feed-rolls thereon, and caps 24 mounted on the top of the side 1.0, force said feed-rolls into contact with the stock as it passes between them and the feed-rolls below. At 53 in Fig. 2 a shoe is shown, which assists in holding the stock in place as it passes beneath the same on its way to the centralizer 17 and the knife beyond.

The above-mentioned parts are all old, so also is a disk 25 and cam 26 by means of which the righthand upper feed-roll 18 is elevated for the accommo- 95 dation of the stock, as will be subsequently explained, through the direct medium of the shaft 19 for said feed-roll and a lever 27 connected with said shaft and having one end pivoted at 28 to the table 14 and the other end extending into the path of said cam. The 100 disk 25 is mounted on a shaft 29 journaled in suitable bearings at the right-hand end of the machine and is driven by a gear 30 from one of the aforesaid trains of gears. The stock enters the machine at the righthand end of the raceway 12 and leaves the machine 105 at the left-hand end of said raceway, passing beneath the shoe 53 and through the centralizer 17 on the way. The centralizer is merely a guide of any suitable construction located near the operating instrument or instruments of the machine for the purpose of holding the stock in proper position while being acted on by such instrument or instruments.

I will next describe in detail the new features. Slidingly mounted at the left of the centralizer 17 in a vertical guide formed by the side 1.0 and a channeled block 31 fastened to said side is a holder 32 having a splitting knife 33 rigidly secured thereto and extending therebelow. This knife is positioned so that the plane of its path of travel coincides with the central vertical plane of the centralizer, hence a core presented to said knife or guided to it by said centralizer will be split along its longitudinal center, as will be made clear hereinafter. The holder 32 receives its vertical reciprocating movement by means of a bell-crank-lever 34 spring-actuated in one direction, a cam-operated arm 35, and a cam 36 on the back of the disk 25. The front end of the horizontal arm of the bell-crank-lever 34 is pivoted at 37 to the holder 32 near the top, the pivot 37 passing through a slot 38 in said arm which permits sufficient play at this point for said lever to do its work. The elbow of the bellcrank-lever is pivoted at 39 to a bracket 40 supported on the table 13. The arm 35 is pivoted between its ends at 31 to the table 13, and has its left-hand end in engagement with the base of the vertical arm of the bell-crank-lever, the latter being notched at 42 to receive such end. On the right-hand end of the arm 35 is a loose, anti-friction roller 43 adapted to be contacted with by the cam 36. A spring 44 has one end fastened to the side 10 and the other end fastened to the bell-crank-lever at a point behind the pivot 37, and the ofiice of this spring is to tension the horizontal arm of said lever downward and so keep the knife 33 in the raceway 12 or to return it to such position after it has been raised and to retain the roller 43 in contact with the disk 25 or with the cam 36.

The cam 36 is concentric with the axis of the disk 25 as is also a slot 45 in an extension 46 from a radial arm 47 at the outer end of which latter said cam is located. The inner end of the arm 47 bears on the shaft 29, and the whole device is fastened to the disk on the back thereof by means of a bolt 48 which passes through the slot 45 into said disk. Upon loosening the bolt 48 the arm 47 can be moved, the shaft 29 which is stationary at the time serving as' a fulcrum, in either direction as far as the ends of the slot 45 will permit, thus relocating the cam 36 on the disk 25; after the adjustment has been made said bolt must be again tightened to lock said cam to said disk.

As an example of the stock which this machine is designed to handle I show a whip core, in Fig. 3, which consists of a wood butt piece 49 and a length of ratan 50, the two pieces being spliced together at 51. 52 represents the slit or split made by my machine in the ratan, which split it will be observed does not extend quite to the spliced terminal of the ratan piece.

Owing to the fact that the two cams 26 and 36 are on the same disk 25, there is relative action between the feed-roll 18 which is governed by the lever 27 and the knife 33, and said cams are so placed relative to machine.

each other on said disk that, during the time said feedroll is elevated, said knife is withdrawn from the raceway 12 and then thrust into such raceway again. The entrance to the raceway, which is at the right-hand end, may be said to be open when the first upper feedroll at this end is raised by the lever 27, and to be closed when said feed-roll ispermitted by said lever to descend or is released to its spring by the lever, and it is during the time that such entrance to the raceway is open, usually, that the knife is operated although the parts might be so set as to bring about the operation of the knife at some other time, as just before said entrance is opened in case the machine is handling extra long cores or cores with extra long butts, or just after said entrance is closed in case the machine is handling very short cores.

With the matter contained in the preceding para graph in mind, the following description of the complete operation of the machine will be readily understood, it being assumed that the cams 26 and 36 are set as shown in the drawings and that the machine is in motion, the disk 25 revolving in the direction indicated by the arrows in Figs. 2 and 5. While the cam 26 and the lever 27 are holding up the associated feedroll 18 the front end of the core which is the front end of the ratan portion of said core as well is introduced into the raceway 12 between said feed-roll and the feed-roll below and is grasped by said feed-rolls as soon as said cam passes from beneath said lever. Meanwhile the knife 33 has been reciprocated, but its action is unimportant at this stage. The core is rapidly carried along the raceway by the feed-rolls and discharged at the left-hand end, but during its passage said core passes beneath the shoe 53 and through the centralizer 17 and is thereby prevented from deviating from a straight path and direct course when the knife 33 is encountered and while the core is split by such knife, the ratan sections both sides of the split passing.

both sides of the knife. Before the wood butt or the joint (51) reaches the knife 33 the cam 36 encounters the roller 43, thereby actuates the arm 35 to throw up the horizontal arm of the bell-crank-lever 34 against the resiliency of the spring 44, and thus causes the holder 32 to be raised and said knife to be lifted not only out of the core but out of the path of the core altogether, so that the wood butt cannot contact with the knife. The core now finishes its course and leaves the It will be understood that there has been no perceptible interruption in the passage of the core from start to finish. Directly the core has passed beyond the knife the cam 36 rides clear of the roller 43 and the spring 44 acts to restore the bell-crank-lever 44 and the arm 35 to normal position and to cause said knife to be again thrust down into the raceway ahead of the next core. When the knife is once more in operative position a second core is grasped between the feed-rolls at the entrance to the raceway and started on its course, such entrance having been opened, in the manner already fully explained, to receive said second core, just before said knife was elevated. The second core is split in the same manner as was the first, and so also is a third, and fourth, and so on indefinitely.

To decrease the length of the slit, loosen the bolt 48, move the cam 36 in the direction of the motion of the disk 25 to whatever extent may be necessary to produce the desired decrease, and again tighten said bolt; the knife 33 will now be withdrawn from the core sooner than before and, since the head of said core has to travel the same distance in all cases and moves at the same rate of speed, the front end will arrive at the knife at the same time that it did in the other case, consequently the slit must be shorter. To increase the length of the slit, loosen the bolt 48, move the cam 36 backward, or in the opposite direction to that of the motion of the disk 25, to whatever extent may be necessary to produce the desired increase, and again tighten said bolt; the knife 33 will not now be withdrawn from the core as soon as it had been previously, but the other conditions will remain the same, hence the slit must be longer.

It is obvious to one skilled in the art that many and varied changes of minor importance may be made in my machine and in some or all of the parts thereof with out departing from the spirit of my invention or passing beyond the range or outside of the scope of my claims. And the machine may, of course, be employed for splitting other materials beside ratan, any material in short which is capable of being split thereby and in which a slit of less length than that of the stock is re quired.

What I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is- 1 1. The combination, in a splitting machine, of a knife, means to position such knife in the path of the stock which the machineis adapted to handle, a raceway and feed and guide mechanism for said stock, means to open and close the entrance to such raceway, and means to withdraw the knife from such path before sufficient time elapses for the stock in the grasp of said feed mechanism to travel a distance equal to the length of the stock 2. The combination, in a splitting machine, with the raceway and feed and guide mechanism for the stock, and cam-actuated means for opening the entrance to such raceway of a knife, spring-actuated means for retaining such knife in said raceway, and cam-actuated means for withdrawing said knife from the raceway.

3. The combination, in a splitting machine, with the raceway and feed and guide mechanism for the stock, and mechanism adapted to open and close the entrance to the raceway at predetermined intervals, of a knife normally extending into said raceway, and means to withdraw such knife from the raceway, such means having relative action to. that of the opening and closing mechanism for the raceway.

&. The combination, in a splitting machine, with the raceway of the machine, a slidingly-mounted knife, and resilient means to normally retain such knife in the raceway, of relatively operating means to open the entrance to the raceway and to actuate said knife against such resilient means out of said raceway.

5 The combination, in a splitting machine, with the raceway and feed and guide mechanism for the stock, and mechanism adapted to open and close the entrance to the raceway at predetermined intervals, of a slidingly-mounted knife, resilient means to normally retain such knife in the raceway, and means to actuate said knife against such resilient means out of said raceway, such means having relative action to that of the opening and closing mechanism for the raceway and comprising a suitably mounted bell-crank-lever in operative relation with' said knife, a cam, and a pivotally-mounted arm having one end in engagement with said bell-crank lever and the other end in the path of said cam.

6. The combination, in a splitting machine, with the raceway and feed and guide mechanism for the stock, a cam, and a lever connected with the feed mechanism at the entrance to said raceway and having one terminal lying in the path of said cam, of a slidingly-mounted knife, resilient means adapted to normally retain such knife in the raceway, a second cam, and mechanism in operative relation with said knife and adapted to be so actuated by said second cam as to withdraw the knife from the raceway and hold it out of the path of the stock until released again to the resilient means.

DAVID C. HULL.

Witnesses:

GEORGE E. WHIPPLE, F. A. CUTTER. 

